Walking through a college campus, I always smell a hint of cloves. I can’t help but be surprised that people still smoke them — I was similarly surprised to discover people smoked them at all.
The first time I encountered clove cigarettes, in the first few furious days of freshman year, I thought they might be a joke, a prank pulled on an obvious goody-two-shoes like myself. Why on earth would someone choose to smoke a spice? The very idea was ridiculous. It recalled some silly 1980s teen movie I’d likely seen half of at someone’s slumber party, in which a younger brother and his friends tried to smoke oregano out of the kitchen. If the losers out of a movie were trying to smoke spices, all the cool new college kids in Los Angeles certainly wouldn’t be. But they were.
I, needless to say, was not cool, and so didn’t.
Kate Thorman 